Monday, September 22, 2008

The Great Indian terror circus




As images of dead and bleeding bodies are beamed in every living room throughout India, terror seems to be a word that is definetely affecting lives and news channel TRPs as well. Bombs rip through our markets and streets in abundance, and we all look for answers and justice. We look at our Government, we look at our police force, we look at the Muslim community, we look at the migrant Bangladeshi and we look at our society.
Something missing ? When was the last time we looked within ourselves when we stepped out of our house or went about calling names to someone from Nepal?
We choose to live in oblivion, since its a convenient way to shrug off our share of responsibility, and saves a lot of sane thinking too. The popular concept of preferring a Govinda movie over a well researched national crisis documentary is just the tip of the iceberg. The Indian diaspora is way too engrossed in its own trivial pursuits of luxury assimilation that thinking sane and digging deep into the heart of things , seems like a herculean task.

When bombs rip through our markets, the one question that echoes across the Geography is 'WHO', however, the sane mind would be compelled to consider the option of researching 'WHY' as well. But since the heart wrenching images of victims clouds our thought process, and we are incessantly subjected to the blabbering on the 1 million hindi news channels, we decide to give 'WHY' a skip.
During the last one month, numerous churches were attacked across India. We decided not to think too much about the issue since Christians are docile and its 'OK" if a few of them get warned from time to time that they are trying to thrive in a Hindu dominated country. Well, forcefully converting people to another religion isnt right anyway and someone had to pull the stops on this one.
In all the debate about who is exiting from Big Brother this week and switching news channels at the same time, we conveniently decide to not think about 'WHY'. Why did these poor peasants become a Christian in the first place. Subjected to years of humiliation and segregation as a lower caste they decided to buy some dignity, a fundamental right that we are free to exercise. The clash of the titans seems to be between Fundamental Rights & Fundamentalists, and in this time and age..it seems Hindu Fundamentalists are totally outweighing civil liberties.

Visuals of the state sponsored Gujarat Carnage were termed as 'retaliatory action' and the mass murderer Narendra Modi was voted back to Power. It could have been the fear of backlash or the capabilities of Modi as a extremely capable terror mastermind that got him back to power. Whatever it was, the people of Gujarat voted for Hate.

The Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have been openly practising bomb making techniques in BJP rules states. A Muslim with just the paperwork on bomb making techniques would have been labelled as a terrorist without batting an eyelid.
I do not wish to sing the secular song and highlight victimization of the minorities, I recommend that both the above mentioned cases should be treated equally and considered terrorists.

On the other hand, the Muslim community needs to go mainstream and leave behind its Ghetto mindset. Madarsas are not what an educated child needs today, he needs global exposure. The apprehesion and fear of taking that widening the gap between development and the minority community.

Terror is NOT a subjective term and it does not change from one community to another. A dead family member leaves a irreplaceable void no matter what religion you practise.
Its about time that we stop relying on governments and start taking charge of things ourselves, focus on the root cause and try to ascertain 'WHY'.
Let us not vote these fundamentalists to power ever again and the criteria for arrest should be terror against humanity, and not just terror against the majority community.
Gandhi made the statement of hating the crime and not the Criminal, the times have changed, we have to hate the criminal, but not his community.

The only minority I support and advocate for, is my minority. People like me who believe that peaceful co-existence is possible. I might not have a huge audience but I am sure of my thoughts and strong in resolve. Let us not vote BJP or Samajwadi party to power again.
Let us condemn the Hindu fundamentalists, who claim to represent me, who claim to represent us !

Let us hang the man who preaches hate and terror, irrespective of his religion, because the man who kills has no religion.

Jai Hind.

जय हिन्द

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